Radio question

A Living Legend
new reply
JanF
Airman First Class
Posts: 83
Joined: 19 Oct 2018, 14:10

Radio question

Post by JanF »

In the cockpit I see no radio that cover the frequencies usually used for com and nav radios. Only ADF frequencies and som short wave (HF). I am told to use Shift 6 where the normal com and nav frequencies can be set.
Does this mean that the radio operator sitting somewhere in the plane has radios not available to the pilots ? Or is it a step away from realism ? Was these frequencies used during WW2 ?

alan CXA651
Senior Master Sergeant
Posts: 2438
Joined: 15 Mar 2016, 08:23

Re: Radio question

Post by alan CXA651 »

Hi Janf.
In the real B17 , the radio operator was in a compartment behind the bombbay , and in combat he would man the gun in the glass window facing aft on top off the fuselage , and the navigator was fwd of the two pilots in same compartment as the bombardier , and in the early years of the war , navigation was dead reconning , with stopwatch , drift meter , and the compass , over water they used a sextant , in the later years of the war some B17s where fitted with LORAN navigation for the US and GEE for britsh B17s and this helped with navigation and blind bombing , the radios of the day was mainly coms , and not very good , any long range coms in the B17 ment winding out a long trailing antenna under the fuselage , A2A due sim restrictions did the coms/vor/dme/adf in the popup window , so you can either fly it as WW2 or in VATSIM as a modified present day WW2 bird , the ADF in the roof is ADF2 by default , pressing the button changes it to ADF1 , but then to get the button back out , you need to reselect ADF2 or VOR1 or 2 in the shift+6 window , it would have been easier had this button been made push and release change over switch for ADF 1/2 , as for the ILS , this was used on B17 aircraft during WW2 in the USA only as an early landing aide , that was in its infancy .
Cockpit comms in WW2 are the 3 boxes above the ADF on the roof , mainly used for short range comms from pilot to tower during taxi/takeoff/landing and aircraft to aircraft in formation when needed , but these are usless in the sim as the freq these can use are not compatable with modern comms.
regards Alan. 8)
Image
Image
Image
Image

JanF
Airman First Class
Posts: 83
Joined: 19 Oct 2018, 14:10

Re: Radio question

Post by JanF »

alan CXA651 wrote: 03 Jun 2021, 00:11 Hi Janf.
In the real B17 , the radio operator was in a compartment behind the bombbay , and in combat he would man the gun in the glass window facing aft on top off the fuselage , and the navigator was fwd of the two pilots in same compartment as the bombardier , and in the early years of the war , navigation was dead reconning , with stopwatch , drift meter , and the compass , over water they used a sextant , in the later years of the war some B17s where fitted with LORAN navigation for the US and GEE for britsh B17s and this helped with navigation and blind bombing , the radios of the day was mainly coms , and not very good , any long range coms in the B17 ment winding out a long trailing antenna under the fuselage , A2A due sim restrictions did the coms/vor/dme/adf in the popup window , so you can either fly it as WW2 or in VATSIM as a modified present day WW2 bird , the ADF in the roof is ADF2 by default , pressing the button changes it to ADF1 , but then to get the button back out , you need to reselect ADF2 or VOR1 or 2 in the shift+6 window , it would have been easier had this button been made push and release change over switch for ADF 1/2 , as for the ILS , this was used on B17 aircraft during WW2 in the USA only as an early landing aide , that was in its infancy .
Cockpit comms in WW2 are the 3 boxes above the ADF on the roof , mainly used for short range comms from pilot to tower during taxi/takeoff/landing and aircraft to aircraft in formation when needed , but these are usless in the sim as the freq these can use are not compatable with modern comms.
regards Alan. 8)
But did they have ADF even back then ? There is controls for ADF in the roof. So would using ADF beacons be realistic even during WW2 ?
What is a drift meter ?

alan CXA651
Senior Master Sergeant
Posts: 2438
Joined: 15 Mar 2016, 08:23

Re: Radio question

Post by alan CXA651 »

Hi Janf.
Yes they had a kund of ADF , look under the belly just fwd of bombbay doors the loop direction finder is inside that teardrop shaped antenna , if you google WW2 b17 you can find the radio and nav equipment that was fitted to them.
The driftmeter can be found by the same search , there where different kinds fitted , but basically , it was a tube going out of the aircraft , the navigator would look into the scope which had parallel lines on it , he would rotate these lines untill objects on the grould pass along them , he then read the degrees of drift from this and either tell the captain to steer say 5 degrees pos or neg from present course , this would counteract the wind direction to stay on course , full discriptions and videos can be found by googling on the use of the different types in use during WW2..
regards Alan. 8)
Image
Image
Image
Image

JanF
Airman First Class
Posts: 83
Joined: 19 Oct 2018, 14:10

Re: Radio question

Post by JanF »

alan CXA651 wrote: 03 Jun 2021, 10:23 Hi Janf.
Yes they had a kund of ADF , look under the belly just fwd of bombbay doors the loop direction finder is inside that teardrop shaped antenna , if you google WW2 b17 you can find the radio and nav equipment that was fitted to them.
The driftmeter can be found by the same search , there where different kinds fitted , but basically , it was a tube going out of the aircraft , the navigator would look into the scope which had parallel lines on it , he would rotate these lines untill objects on the grould pass along them , he then read the degrees of drift from this and either tell the captain to steer say 5 degrees pos or neg from present course , this would counteract the wind direction to stay on course , full discriptions and videos can be found by googling on the use of the different types in use during WW2..
regards Alan. 8)
It comes to my mind that there is an ILS instrument in the cockpit. Did they have that but not VOR ? How did that work compared to a modern ILS ?

alan CXA651
Senior Master Sergeant
Posts: 2438
Joined: 15 Mar 2016, 08:23

Re: Radio question

Post by alan CXA651 »

Hi Janf.
The ILS worked more or less like the modern ones , but it was only used in the USA in WW2 as it was in its infancy , and not many airports had it from what i can remember , once they where posted overseas this instrument might have been used as an aide to the air base with no glide slope aide , landing would have been by Mk1 eyeball .
regards Alan. 8)
Image
Image
Image
Image

User avatar
SeattleSleeper
Airman First Class
Posts: 75
Joined: 02 Feb 2014, 09:58
Location: Pennsylvania

Re: Radio question

Post by SeattleSleeper »

Prior to the implementation of ILS in the ETO, the DREM lighting system (named for RAF Drem, West Fenton Aerodrome , where it was first implemented) was used for bad weather approaches.
Image

new reply

Return to “B-17 Flying Fortress”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 8 guests